Best Super Bowl Commercials: Betty White Snickers Ad the Best?

There are those who do not watch the Super Bowl for the game; instead, they watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. For others, the commercials are a pleasant distraction from the tension of the game. The commercials for Super Bowl XLIV were no different than in previous years in that most were entertaining, some were okay, and some were just average ad spots. They ranged from car ads to stock trading ads to Doritos ads, plus the obligatory eTrade babies, Bud Light/Budweiser, and GoDaddy.com commercials. And then there was that Snickers commercial...

According to USA Today, the Betty White Snickers commercial won their 22nd Annual Super Bowl Ad Meter for most liked commercial. In the commercial, young guys are playing football and they tell the one who just got decked he's playing like "Betty White." After a rejuvenating Snickers, SAG Award-winner Betty White transforms into a young man who scores. The commercial ends with veteran actor Abe Vigoda getting decked.

A Super Bowl ad spot cost between $2 and $3 million for a thirty-second commercial. Anheuser Busch (Budweiser and Bud Light) bought the most ad space, spending $5 million. They also had two commercials land in the USA Today Ad Meter Top 5.

In all, nearly 60 commercials were aired during the Super Bowl.

One of the most talked about series of ads of the Super Bowl was the Doritos commercials, all of which relied on physical humor. One guy got shocked by his dog, who put a shock collar on him. In another, a small child slapped his mother's suitor and gave him two rules, ticking them down with his little fingers: "Keep your hands off my mama; keep your hands of my Doritos." Then there was the guy who lifted a bag of Doritos from a fanatic Doritos lover and eventually is attacked by a guy wearing Doritos armor and flinging the triangular chips like shuriken.

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre did a commercial for Hyundai where he won the Super Bowl at age 50.

Bud Light had its usual humorous commercials. The standout may have been the ad where astronomers at an observatory saw a giant comet or meteor heading toward earth, so they broke out the Bud Light and began partying as if the world were ending. Then a tiny smoking pebble pinged against the lens of the telescope. In another commercial, in a "Lost" setting, the survivors find a fridge full of Bud Light. They party on the beach and when one of their number starts picking up radio signals, another partier quickly changes the frequency to music.

Bridgestone tires aired a spot where guys raced to the edge of a pier, spinning their SUV around. A killer whale they had been transporting flew off into the sea. The punch line? Apparently, the killer whale had been involved in a bachelor party (a direct rip-off of the hit movie, "The Hangover").

There were dull and boring commercials as well. Budweiser produced another one of its drawn-out friendship ads. The latest showed a longhorn busting through a fence to be with his buddies, the Budweiser Clydesdales. But even the lameness of that ad could not compare with the tepid response received by the controversial Focus on the Family ad starring Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. According to USA Today's Ad Meter, the pro-life ad scored in the lowest quarter of the ad spots. Serious does not sell well on Super Bowl Sunday.

In the end, commercials' popularity are as subjective as a favorite song. There have been complaints that the Betty White Snickers commercial condones violence against the elderly. There have also been complaints that the Doritos commercial where the child slaps the adult sets a bad example for children. And, of course, there were the complaints about the Tim Tebow commercial long before it went to air.

But the worst commercial? The 10-15 minutes of live music by the Who for the Halftime Show. Good thing they sold millions of albums before that performance...

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Source:

USAToday.com